Sports Commentary

Lucas Myers

For the Review

The greatest time of the year has finally arrived. The smell of autumn has started to creep up on my senses as they recover from a long summer of agonizing allergies.

Yet the end of the allergy season is not what I’m excited about. It is the arrival of prime time football season.

The naps during baseball games are coming to an end, and ESPN will no longer be overrun with those repetitive tennis matches, which seem to last forever and take me back to my childhood video game, Pong.

No longer do I have to spend Monday nights with the girlfriend at some knitting festival or become a human pretzel doing yoga. Finally, I can grab a few cold ones, throw down a greasy cheeseburger and spend some quality time with the fellas.

This season is underway with a fast start and has brought along great news; and that takes a writer’s job easy.

First of all, Brett Favre is no longer a cheesehead or in retirement; instead, he took his country-boy attitude up to New York where he led the Jets to a season-opening win. Unfortunately, during the following two weeks the New York Jets have turned into the New York Jet-lags.

But honestly it is not the NFL anymore without Favre in that Packers uniform. We no longer get to see him tackle his receivers and leap into a crowd of crazy Green Bay fans. Instead, we see Aaron Rodgers trying to impersonate the Lambeau leap. Favre pulling a Michael Jordan, though, is far from the biggest news these days.

Hollywood model Tom Brady finally found out what getting injured really feels like, and this time he does not need to fake it to get attention like he did before the Super Bowl last year. This time he can stand on the sideline and watch his backup quarterback, Matt Cassel, play. Cassel, who has not started a football game since his senior year of high school, will lead his team to a 9-7 record and out of the playoffs where the Patriots belong.

New England’s defense is getting too old, proven by their recent trips to Sunday brunch at the senior center. Their linebackers can no longer stop the run, and their defensive backs look like they are walking behind those receivers. On Sunday, the “hoodie coach” of the Patriots was outcoached by the Dolphins as they pulled the direct snap out of the college ranks and put up one rushing touchdown after another.

Enough with the sensationalized NFL. How about the real gridiron where players actually play because they love the game?

The college season is up and running after a few weeks of hard-fought games. There have already been some big changes in the top 25. It was nice to see “Smokin’” Pete Carrol and his army of Trojans get the No. 1 rank after their demoralizing victory over Virginia and continued domination of Ohio State.

USC will continue this  streak until they get ousted from the BCS because the Pac-10 is supposedly weaker than the SEC.

The Big Ten is the most overrated league in the nation, and they still seem to get a team into the championship every year. For once, give us here on the West Coast some love and put the army of Troy in position to destroy an SEC team.

Rankings are not the only problem in college football these days. For the last couple weeks, every Washington Huskies fan has been as mad and disappointed as a fan could be because of the poor officiating that literally decided the game for the Huskies against the BYU Cougars.

Quarterback Jake Locker scored a touchdown with seconds remaining to put the Huskies in position to take it into overtime after the PAT, but after Locker scored he tossed the ball in the air and began to celebrate.

The celebration was not a dance or show; it was just a normal old-fashioned celebration. The refs apparently did not want to stick around for overtime, so they threw the flag for unsportsman-like conduct and made them kick the PAT from 35 yards away. That led to a BYU block and another UW loss. Needless to say, after that game I had to go buy a new television.

Why call excessive celebration at a time in the game where it will change who wins or loses?

Referees should stick to officiating games, not deciding them. Maybe the referee who threw the flag had a good reason, like a hundred bucks on the BYU
Cougars.